flight must cause him to sway and stagger and topple over sideways, he rises as on springs to his full height, and with another effort of his well-trained muscles he hurls himself from the spit on to the broader ledge behind, and is safe.

Panting as he was, Ahmed sped off without delay. At last he reached the edge of the wood; he plunged into it, and finding a track which he had often followed, he ran easily as a deer. When he emerged at the other end, he dashed across the fields, green with his father's crops, and came to the gates.

"Minghal Khan is upon us!" he cried, as he entered. Some young boys playing in the street took up the cry and ran screaming into their houses; old Ahsan, the gate-keeper—now frail and bent, but once the best rider and the cunningest horse-stealer of Shagpur—came tottering out of his hut.

"Minghal Khan, say you, Ahmed-ji? That son of a dog!" and he slammed-to the gates and barred them, muttering curses on the enemy.

By this time the cries of the children had brought the villagers into the street. They were for the most part old men and feeble; the young and able-bodied were with Rahmut Khan; but there were among them a few men in the prime of life and some boys of about Ahmed's age. Breathlessly he told them what he had seen.

"The gates are but as ghi to Minghal," cried old Ahsan. "They will not keep him out till the sun sets."

"Then we will go into the tower," said Ahmed, "and shut ourselves up there until my father returns."

He ran into his father's house and brought out the chief's two wives and three daughters, who fled swiftly to the tower upon the wall. Then with the aid of some of the people he collected what provisions he could; the women filled their brass pots with water at the well, and carried them on their heads to the tower; men followed them with arms and ammunition, and with strong balks of wood for barricading the foot of the winding stair. Within ten minutes of Ahmed's arrival in the village all who chose had shut themselves with him in the refuge.

Not all chose. Even while these preparations were being made some of the men held aloof. Minghal Khan was a younger, wealthier, and more powerful chief than Rahmut: what was the good of holding out against him? There had been for many years a feud between them; such an attack as was now imminent might long have been foreseen. The more powerful must win: it was Fate. Had they not known many such cases? Was it not better to yield to the enemy at once and make their peace with him? Ahmed and old Ahsan hotly protested, appealed to their loyalty, reminded them of what the chief's anger would be when he came back and found that they had betrayed him. These appeals were effective with the bolder spirits, but there was still a good proportion of the villagers who foresaw that their chief's dominion was at an end, and were eager to make their own future secure by nailing the rising sun. These remained in the village street, and when, a few minutes after Ahmed and his party had shut themselves in the tower, the band of horsemen, fifty strong, with Minghal at their head, rode up to the gates and demanded admittance, one of the disaffected removed the bars and made humble obeisance as the rival chief entered.

The new-comers uttered loud shouts of exultation at the ease of their victory, not at first aware of the resolute little band in the tower. It was only when Minghal had entered the chief's house and found it deserted that he suspected what had happened. Then with a grim smile he questioned the villagers, all most obsequious to their new master; and Ahmed, watching the scene from a latticed window high up in the tower, wondered what the smile portended. He expected to see Minghal's men collect the grain-stuffs and everything else of value that the village contained, and then set fire to the houses; but old Ahsan by his side, better acquainted with the long feud which had existed between the two chiefs, stroked his beard and groaned.

"Hai! hai!" he muttered. "It has come at last. But I am too old, too old, to serve a new master. Shagpur will have another gate-keeper now, Ahmed-ji."

"What meanest thou, old man?" asked Ahmed, wondering.

"Minghal has come not for plunder, but for mastery," was the reply. "'Tis what he has meditated for a dozen years; and who can strive against Fate? When the master comes back he will find that Shagpur is no longer his. If he resists he will be slain; if he accepts his lot, he will be loaded with chains or cast out of the village, a beggar to the end of his days."

"And what of us, then?" asked Ahmed.

"Hai!" said the old man. "As for you, I speak not, Ahmed-ji; but for me, I am too old, as I said. I have my knife."

Ahmed looked into the gate-keeper's face. He read there neither fear nor despair, nothing but a calm resolution. Then he uttered a scornful laugh.

"No one can strive against Fate, truly," he said; "but who knows that Fate has given us into Minghal's hand? By the beard of the Prophet, Ahsan——"

But the old man put his hand on the boy's mouth.

"Hush, Ahmed-ji," he said, with a sort of stern tenderness; "'tis not meet, little one, that oath in your mouth. You have well-nigh forgotten, but I do not forget. We are as we were born, and you were born a Feringhi."

CHAPTER THE SECOND

The Making of a Pathan

Eight years before this raid of Minghal's on Shagpur, a small boy, dark, bright-eyed, happy-looking, was sitting on the grass at some little distance from an open tent, nursing a wooden sword, and trying to make conversation in babbling Urdu with a big, swarthy, bearded Pathan who squatted opposite him, and smiled as he tried to understand and answer the little fellow's questions. From the tent came the sound of voices, and the Pathan would now and then lift his eyes from the child and dart a keen glance towards the spot where Mr. George Barclay, deputy-commissioner of the district, was engaged in dealing with one of the troublesome cases that came before him for settlement.

For many years the dwellers in the plains of the Panjab had suffered from the encroachments of their neighbours in the hills. At first these hill-men only came to the plains in the winter-time, when their own bare lands became uninhabitable from frost and snow, and returned in the summer, when they might find sustenance for their flocks, and good hunting. But seeing the weakness of the plain-dwellers and the fertility of their soil, the hill-men had not been satisfied with paying these winter visits, and, after remaining as uninvited guests, returning to their own place without having made a domicile in the plains. They began to regard the land on which they temporarily settled as theirs, and by and by exacted tribute from the rightful owners. Thus they became possessed of two homes, one for the winter, one for the summer. Naturally this seizure of property was little to the liking of the plain-dwellers. They made some resistance and fought the oppressors, but were no match in arms for the more warlike hill-men. When, however, the Panjab was incorporated in the dominions of John Company, some of the dispossessed land-owners took advantage of the well-known respect of the British for law to make an attempt to recover their property through the agency of their new rulers; and it was to show cause why he should not yield the lands he held in the plain that Minghal Khan, one of the hill chieftains, had been summoned before the deputy-commissioner.

Minghal obeyed the summons grudgingly. In the hills he was free, and owned no master save God; it irked him that any one, least of all the sahib-log, infidels, eaters of pigs, should question his rights in the plains; for though he knew that the lands in dispute were not his by inheritance, yet might was right, and if the plain-men were not strong enough to hold them—why, so much the worse for them. And when he came down from the hills to argue the case before